No Bow zones: how to navigate London's cycling danger spots

Yesterday City Hall was shown three ways to make the notorious Bow roundabout safer for cyclists. Until that happens Nick Curtis explains how to navigate it and other danger spots

Tuesday 26 November 2013 12:10 BST

As a practitioner of the more effete, lifestyle-y, pantywaist branches of journalism, I’ve always had an inferiority complex about those who report from war zones, disasters or riots. Last year, though, it seems I regularly took my life in my hands without properly realising it. During the Olympics I often rode my bike round the Bow roundabout, sometimes at night.

At the time, I found the subsequent westward journey home along the Mile End Road more scary — lorries roaring out of the night and thundering past well over the speed limit, wheels crunching into the pathetic strip of blue paint that grandiosely calls itself Cycle Superhighway 2. But two of the 14 cyclists already killed in London this year — the same number as for the whole of 2012 — died at the Bow roundabout. In 2011 two other cyclists died there: the death of Brian Dorling, and the consequent, savage criticism by the Met of the superhighway system, prompted a rethink by City Hall of the layout at Bow.

It didn’t help much. In 2012 a blogger at grumpycycling.blogspot.co.uk wrote a point-by-point demolition of the confusing layout, skewed priorities and hurried, mystifying traffic-light sequencing at Bow: in the accompanying video that he posted, a police van turning north jumps the lights. More recent video of a westbound journey from a cyclist’s helmet-cam posted on the Evening Standard’s website accentuates the way the misconceived layout leads cyclists into the path of traffic heading north or south on the A12. An animated TfL video showing how to use the junction safely looks alarmingly like an archaic arcade game with the cyclists as “tokens” waiting to be bagged by pouncing car avatars.

It’s not just Bow. There were 571 cyclists killed or seriously injured (KSIs) in London in 2005-2011, the highest rate and the second highest number of casualties in the country, according to a Department for Transport report published in June this year. The map of road casualties at http://map.itoworld.com/ is sobering. “The most dangerous places, statistically, are major junctions like Elephant and Castle and Hyde Park Corner,” says Mike Cavenett of the London Cycling Campaign.

“In an ideal world we would avoid them. But when we talk about detours and diversions, we must remember London is quite big. People have long journeys and bicycles are human-powered, so adding 15 or 20 per cent to a journey is significant.” True. The hairiest parts of my daily commute from Kennington to the Standard’s offices in Kensington are negotiating the Vauxhall gyratory system and Hyde Park Corner: avoiding either increases my journey time by a third. The Aldgate gyratory and the Holborn one-way system are also hard-to-avoid black spots, as are Blackfriars and Southwark bridges.

“If you’re not doing a journey regularly, you may not know about back routes,” adds Cavenett. “People favour main routes because they make journeys more convenient. And the problem with Bow is it is quite hard to avoid: if you are coming from east London there just aren’t many crossing points across the Lea valley.” The Mayor’s Cycling Commissioner Andrew Gilligan was yesterday shown three options for improving Bow. “All involve significant change to the CS2 route as a whole and to all the junctions along it,” he says. “I’m deciding this week and we hope — not guarantee — to announce next month.” Until then, here is our guide to safely navigating Bow and some other danger spots.

If you must go Bow...

The chief point to remember when using any of London’s Cycle Superhighways, but especially CS2 at Bow, is that the protection they offer is theoretical, not physical. It’s just a bit of blue paint. Next, the lights. At the roundabout, a green light for cyclists gives the illusion that they have right of way across the junction, but in fact only signals that they should move into the advance stop box. Even when this second green light is illuminated, it’s worth noting that the light sequence here is brief: unless cyclists move forward the moment the light goes green, they run the risk of being caught by A12 traffic feeding in. No one should risk the light if it has already been green for a few seconds, and certainly not when it turns amber. Walking your bike across the roundabout is not much of an option, since pedestrians are, if anything, afforded less consideration than cyclists at Bow.

Route manoeuvres: how to avoid the cycling black spots

Bow roundabout

To avoid the roundabout entirely involves a roundabout process indeed, unless you are intrepid enough to brave the flyover, with its speeding pantechnicons and cross-winds. For a bike journey from Tower Hill to Stratford, Google Maps suggests the CS3 route involving cycle paths along the Limehouse Cut and the Lea river, around Three Mills Island, then via Bisson Road, Gay Road, Abbey Lane, Abbey Road and West Ham Lane. This involves numerous footbridges. A cycling friend from Hackney says she always bypasses the Bow roundabout and heads north on the cycle path by the Grand Union Canal alongside Mile End Park, then east through Victoria Park: Stratford would then be reached by dropping down through Wallis Road, Waterden Road and Westfield Avenue. This, too, involves crossing a pedestrian bridge. Both routes add about 15 minutes to the direct route. The safest option would undoubtedly be to get a folding bike and hop on the Central line from Mile End to Stratford. Or hire a helicopter to airlift you over the roundabout.

Vauxhall gyratory and bridge

If heading from south London to Knightsbridge or Kensington, the Vauxhall gyratory — with four to six lanes of traffic and cycle paths that weave in and out of both traffic and footway — can be avoided by weaving through the (almost car-free) council and industrial estates between Wandsworth Road and Nine Elms Lane/Battersea Park Road, carrying your bike up a set of steps by the railway line, skirting the power station and the Cats’ and Dogs’ Home, and crossing Chelsea Bridge. If heading to Westminster or the West End, the Albert Embankment or the parallel route along Tyers Street and Newport Street (currently closed thanks to the endless construction work on Damien Hirst’s new gallery) leads to a safer river crossing at Lambeth Bridge.

Hyde Park Corner

Immeasurably improved since the introduction of shared routes across the roundabout for cyclists and pedestrians, this is still a scary spot beset by light-jumping petrolheads. Bypass it to the south via Halkin Street, Wilton Crescent and Wilton Place, or to the north via the cycle paths in Hyde Park and either the cycle route across Park Lane into Upper Brook Street or the underpass near the Hilton (though this leads to a finicky one-way system).

Marble Arch and Oxford Street

A minefield of blundering pedestrians, U-turning taxis and lumbering buses. If travelling west-east, avoid Hyde Park and Brook Street (see above), cutting north up Duke Street, then east along Wigmore Street. Or vice versa, using James Street as the cut-through.

Aldgate Gyratory

A fair approximation of one of the circles of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy, for all forms of transport and pedestrians, and hard to avoid. But it’s probably worth weaving through the backstreets of Shoreditch (Bury Street, Goring Street, Cutler Street) if you can, or dip down for a longish east-west detour via CS3 along Cable Street, which is muddled but not as frightening as Aldgate itself. Better to lengthen your journey than shorten your life.